“But you believe him? You told me not to trust a word he said.” Funny how her advice only applies to me.
“Vee, he wants us to kill Lothar. He made that clear at the party. And anyway, the Hawthorne and Elder clans have a pretty unstable history, from what I know. Tensions run high between them.”
“So, what will happen to him now?”
Celeste tilts her head a little, shooting me an Are you crazy? look. “We’ll hunt him down and slit him open from tail to gizzard.”
“Not Lothar. Amelrik.” Do dragons really have gizzards?
“Oh, we’re far from done with him. He’s got an awful lot to answer for.”
So they’re not going to kill him. At least, not yet. I realize I was holding my breath and let it out slowly. I still have questions of my own for him—questions I intend to get the answers to, whether Celeste wants me talking to him or not. She just doesn’t need to know about it, that’s all.
“I came here to ask you something,” I tell her, finally getting to the reason I came to see her in the first place. “I . . .” I brace myself, taking in a deep breath. I want to say this in the calmest, most rational way possible, but instead I just start blurting it all out. “I need you to teach me magic! I know I’m not the ideal candidate or anything, and I know what I said, about being a dud and not having the power. Not wanting it. But . . .” I squeeze my eyes shut. This is the worst part. “You were right.”
The words leave a bad taste in my mouth, as if admitting she was right this once means she was right about everything, ever. That every time I’ve ever disagreed with her—and, believe me, there have been plenty of times—I must have been in the wrong.
Celeste doesn’t look like she’s about to spout off an “I told you so,” though. She mostly just looks confused. “You want me to teach you magic?” She raises a skeptical eyebrow.
Who else am I going to get to do it? After I practically begged Torrin to marry me and he turned me down, then saved my life, I’m not about to go crawling back to him, asking him to help me become a real paladin so I don’t have to marry some nasty old man. Plus, he’s not a St. George. He doesn’t know the family power. And I’m not about to ask Father for help—not that he would—so that leaves Celeste.
“You said this is my chance. Do you want me to get married to Lord Older-Than-Dirt, or whatever his name is?”
“Varrens,” she corrects me, as if it matters. Then she lets out a slow breath. “I’m leaving in the morning.”
“In the morning. It’s only noon.”
She hesitates, thinking it over. She looks almost like she might give in, then shakes her head. “You told me yourself you don’t even want the magic.”
“And you told me it was my only way out of this marriage.”
“I’m supposed to teach you something you haven’t learned in seventeen years? In less than one day?”
My heart sinks. When she says it like that, it does sound pretty impossible. And it’s not like I haven’t been saying how impossible it is all along. Me and magic? Not going to happen. If it was, it would have happened a long time ago. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up and just accept that I’m going to be some walking skeleton’s baby factory. “It’s my last chance. And if anyone can teach me, it’s you. My kind, smart, loving sister, who would never turn her back on me, and—”
“Flattery, Vee? Really? How vain do you think I am?”
“Not vain enough, apparently.” I sigh. “I just want to try. One last time. And I’m going to do it whether you help me or not.”
“Did I say I wouldn’t?”
“You didn’t exactly jump at the chance.”
“Yes, well, your kind, smart, loving sister, who’s also the best paladin in the world—you left that part out—is going to help you. I’m leaving in the morning. It might be a day trip, or it might be weeks. I might not be back in time for the wedding. So this really is our last chance. If I’ve got one day to teach you magic, then you’re going to learn it in one day, damn it. Even if it takes all night.”
“You don’t mind? I mean, there’s a chance”—a pretty big chance—“that I’m not going to succeed.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Then call it a wedding present. You either learn it or you don’t, but at least you’ll know you tried. And, besides, what’s the harm in it?”
“Famous last words,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re right. What could it hurt?” Worst case, I’m a failure at magic and I don’t learn anything. Which isn’t any different than how things are now. “We’ve got nothing to lose.”
She claps me on the back, a little too hard, almost knocking the wind out of me. “That’s the spirit!”
“Right.” It’s just my entire future that’s on the line here. Just my happiness, my safety, and my uterus.
No big deal.
Celeste scowls at the dragon ring sitting on the dais in the Ceremonial Room. A cold, lifeless circle of iron, just like it’s been for the past twelve hours. It’s after midnight, and I’m exhausted and sweaty and ready to throw that stupid ring across the room.“Again,” she commands, her voice stern and her face impassive, not showing any of the disappointment I know she must be feeling.
I know I certainly am. “Celeste, it’s not—”
“Keep trying,” she snaps.
My arms are shaking from fatigue, but I hold my hands over the ring again. I shut my eyes and will the magic to work this time. I picture a spark igniting inside me, my St. George magic flowing through my veins and pouring into this stupid ring. I imagine it binding a dragon’s powers and rendering them useless.
I imagine all that, but I don’t actually feel anything. Well, unless feeling like I might collapse counts, but as far as magic goes, I’ve got nothing.
“You have to want it,” Celeste says.
“You’ve been telling me that all day. It’s not helping.”
“And you haven’t been listening.”
I sigh and press my palms against my eyes, trying to remember why I ever thought this was a good idea. It’s just making me feel worse about my situation, and Celeste telling me that I’m a failure because I don’t want it enough? It’s like saying I’m choosing to be old-man bait. Or worse, like I’m not guilty enough for what happened to Mother.
“Again,” Celeste says, even sterner this time, though she must be getting tired, too.
“It’s late,” I tell her. “You have to get up early tomorrow, for the hunt. And this is obviously not working.”
“I’m not giving up, and neither should you.”
I shake my head and slouch down on one of the wooden benches, my body sore and stiff. This rock-hard bench isn’t exactly the most comfortable place I’ve ever sat, but right now it feels infinitely better than staying on my feet. “I’ve tried. I really have. But we’ve been at this all day, and now all night, and I don’t have it in me to keep pretending anything’s going to happen.”
“You just have to—”
“What? Want it more?” I glare at her. “It doesn’t matter how much I want it. I don’t feel anything. I just . . . I don’t have magic, okay?”
Celeste sits down next to me. I think she’s going to lecture me some more, but she stays silent for a minute, then says, “Do you know why that dragon’s locked up in our dungeon? Do you know why I didn’t want you even talking to him?”
“Maybe because he’s a dragon?” It all sounds pretty self-explanatory to me.
“Right, but it’s more than that. He’s also a liar. A con artist. The kind of criminal whose weapons are words and trickery. You can’t trust a single thing he says.”
“And you think I’m so stupid that I’d . . . what? Let him go if he asked me nicely enough?” I roll my eyes at her. “There’s nothing he could ever say to make that happen.”
“He’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of paladins. He’s infiltrated cities up and down the countryside—ones with stronger forces than ours. He charms his way in and wins their trust, and then, once he knows their weaknesses, the purple dragons invade. They’ve taken out several paladin settlements.”
I swallow, suddenly feeling sick. “They what? How long has this been going on?”
Celeste looks away. “A couple years.” She clears her throat. “Almost three.”
I gape at her. “And you never told me?”
“We didn’t want to scare you.”
We. So it wasn’t just my sister who thought she needed to protect me. Is that why Torrin knew just how dangerous Amelrik was? Because he’d known about his crimes for years? “But you said Amelrik’s from Hawthorne clan. The purple dragons are from Elder. Are you saying he’s working with them?” That doesn’t make sense. I mean, it would explain how he knew Lothar, but not why he wanted to kill him. “I thought you said those two clans weren’t on good terms.”
“I did. Their history is . . . complicated.” She looks away as she says it, and I know she’s leaving something out, either because she thinks I won’t understand or because she thinks it’ll scare me. Either reason kind of pisses me off. “And anyway,” she goes on, “it hasn’t happened for a while. Nearly six months now.”